A Movie Studio Enters the Direct Streaming Market

Lionsgate and Tribeca Enterprises are teaming up on Tribeca Short List, “an online video-on-demand service focused on “curated” prestige titles drawn from their libraries, along with a selection of foreign films.” This will debut by next June; no price information is yet available.

Tribeca is best known for their New York City film festival. Lionsgate is best known for The Hunger Games movies, and with their acquisition of Summit, the Twilight franchise. I know them best for action films like Dredd and I, Frankenstein, although they have also released plenty of more arty movies. They may have an audience, but I’m not sure their properties are deep enough to support a service that can attract subscribers month after month.

This is the quote I find most intriguing:

Jane Rosenthal, Tribeca’s chief executive, said in a statement that the goal was a “highly curated experience that disrupts the ‘more is more’ model in today’s streaming on-demand landscape.”

That “more is more” — in other words, the idea that customers want plenty of content to choose from for one low monthly price — is the appeal of streaming, in my opinion. I can see why studios would hate it, though, because it doesn’t allow them to value their content as more special than others. But I don’t know of many fans (with the exception of the classic “Marvel zombie”) that segregate their entertainment by who releases it. I don’t want to watch only Warner or Universal movies, so a streaming service per studio is of minimal interest.